The faint whisper of scuffing feet and low-pitched voices had fallen away into complete stillness, and out of the stillness came the Beginning. Not any note of horns, but the sudden overwhelming stench of animal potency, as though some great rutting beast were nearby.
A low thrilling murmur, a kind of moan, rose from the crowd, and as one man they surged inward almost to the outer surface of the standing stones, as though drawn by the thing within them, the thing that drew me with the rest, as it had drawn me when I was a boy among my own hills, but so long ago that I had forgotten. . . . The mist seemed to have gathered more thickly within the stone circle, and out of the midst of it, tangible as the musky stink of rut, was flowing a vast Power. Somewhere a pipe called silverly, small and remote as a bird over the moon-washed moors, more compelling than the war horns of an army. And as though at the command of the pipe, the mist began to lift. Somewhere at the heart of it came a blurred blink of bluish light, that strengthened into a small clear jet of flame springing from between a huge sweep of shadowy antlers.
On a throne of piled turf in the exact center of the Nine Dancers, his arms folded on his breast, sat a tall man, naked and shining, with the head of a royal stag.
At sight of him the people set up a great throbbing cry that rose and rose and seemed to beat vast wings about the hill shoulder; and then in one great surge of movement like a breaking wave, they flung themselves to the ground.
And I, I was on my knees with the rest, the old men and women, the warriors and the children, the maidens with the magic vervain and the white convolvulus braided in their hair, my face hidden in my hands, and the feel of young Amlodd’s shoulder shaking against mine.
When I looked up, the Horned One had risen and was standing with arms upstretched, showing himself to his people. The flame between the glorious crowning sweep of antlers bathed his breast and shoulders in a radiance that was like the cold blue fire that drips from the oar blades in northern seas; his flanks and thighs seemed insubstantial as woodsmoke, and the shadows engulfed his feet. And slowly, as though drawn upward by his raised arms, the crowd rose to their feet, and again the wild greeting cry was beating about the hill shoulder; and this time it did not die away, but changed by little and little into a rhythmic chanting, into the ancient intercession for the harvest and the mating time that one hears with the loins and belly rather than the head.
It was not quite as we sang it among my own hills, but though word and cadence may vary a little, the core of the mystery remains the same. The ritual slaying of the God, the dark gleam of the sacrificial knife, and the wailing of the women, and the rebirth corning after. . . . I remembered Bedwyr with his harp beside the horse-dung fire at Narbo Martius when the world was young, and the merchant in his blanket robes swaying to and fro. “So the women used to sing when I was a boy — singing the lament for Adonis, when the crimson anemones are springing from the rocks. . . .” And I remembered the bracken-thatched church in the cool light of that morning and Guenhumara kneeling at the Lord’s Table; and I saw the oneness of all things.
And then the ritual was over, and the reborn Lord had seated himself once more on his throne of turfs; and I thought that there had been other beast-headed figures among the standing stones, but could not be sure for the mist that seemed to hang there still. And people were catching up unlit torches from the fringe of the dancing floor, and crowding forward to kindle them from the blue flame burning on the very forehead of the God.
The light flared brighter moment by moment, a wheel of ragged fire-tongues circling the Nine Sisters. The fierce coppery light beat farther and farther up the weathered flanks of the standing stones, driving back the moonlight; and among the tawny smoke, now glimpsed, now lost, were surely uptossed heads, horned and winged, hound-snouted and prick-eared. . . . And in the very heart and center of the flaming circle, the stag-headed figure sat immovable, the red patterns of ritual death and ritual birth still on his breast and thighs, and the old dry scars of war and hunting such as men carry who are not gods. I had lost my sense of oneness, and I could have wept for it like a child who falls asleep at the warm hearth and wakes to find itself in the alien dark beyond a closed door; only I knew that it had been there. . . .
Something of the godhead was fading from him, as the blue light dimmed before the red flare of the torches, so that one became aware once more of the man’s head within the mask. And yet he lost nothing by returning humanity. The god was incarnate. None the less the Life of the People because we knew that he was also Maglaunus the chieftain, none the less terrible and apart.
All at once the crowd fell back a little, and there was empty torchlit space between me and the still figure on the high turf throne. The antlered head was turned toward me, and I felt the eyes behind the mask reaching out to mine across the emptiness; felt at the same time, as though it were in myself, the appalling weariness of the man, the first lonely and terrible awareness of returning self.
“My Lord Artos, Count of Britain.”
Maglaunus’s voice was scarcely recognizable, hollow under the mask. He made a small summoning gesture with one hand and was still again. And I knew that the moment had come. I walked forward across the trampled turf and stood before him. He tipped his head far back to look at me, and for an instant I caught the flicker of reflected torchlight behind the eye slits under the stag’s muzzle. “I am here,” I said.
“The Lammas torches are lit,” he said. And that was all.
AN old warrior with a headdress made from the feathers of a golden eagle — it is in my mind that he was one of the chieftain’s many uncles — came forward to stand beside the turf throne and speak with me as to my taking Guenhumara, as to the bonds of friendship, and the dowry that she would bring me. For it was not for the Horned One to speak of these things, though it would have been well enough for Maglaunus the chieftain at other times. I heard the old man talking, and the mention of a hundred armed and mounted men with the chieftain’s second son to head them; I heard my own voice making the replies that courtesy demanded. I saw the little blue veins that writhed about the old man’s forehead, and the torchlight shining through the silvery down at the base of the eagle’s feathers. But all the while my awareness was going out beyond the old man, beyond even the Stag-Headed One on the throne, to the place where the torches had moved apart, leaving a gap of smoky darkness; and in the darkness something stirred and was still, giving no more to the torchlight than a blink of gold.
I turned once more full to the still figure on the throne. “The dowry is good, for horses and armed men are of greater worth than much gold to me, and gladly I accept it with the maiden.” I made my voice ring against the standing stones, so that all the shadows lost in the farthest dark might hear it. “The Lammas torches are lit, and now that it is no longer taboo, I ask that I may take the Maiden Guenhumara from her father’s hearth to mine. So shall the bond of kinship be made complete between Maglaunus, Clan Chieftain of the Damnonii, and Artos, the Count of Britain.“
There was a long pause, and then very slowly the antlered head inclined; and the hollow voice spoke behind the mask, using the old form of words that belong to every asking: “What can you give the maiden in place of what she leaves for you?”